Ang Lee (
Lee's relationship with the US has been as lengthy as that with Taiwan. He worked on Spike Lee's student short feature Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads in the early 1980s, before eventually finding financing for features back in Taiwan, including Eat Drink Man Woman, which remains one of modern Taiwanese film's most elegant and delightful entries.
Unlike master director Hou Hsiao-hsien (
But the subtexts of his films are no less challenging, if more subtle, than the politics of his country of birth. Lee has said that in Taiwan he felt like an outsider while growing up, a feeling that followed him to the US. Instead, film is his reality.
In his films, this subtle ache of isolation -- the tenuousness of filial piety, social estrangement and distress and the tensions that arise from competing objects of devotion -- is surely informed by his upbringing and the ethnic disjunctures that seem to have left Lee, a Mainlander, non-plussed about the role of politics in life.
Lee's significant contribution to film culture is his ability to get inside the cultures and characters he depicts and inject them with insight and maturity in a way that transcends stereotypes of Asian or Western film. It is an achievement that few who cross this "boundary" can claim; not even Hong Kong director John Woo (吳宇森), despite all of his intelligence and ferocious energy, has been able to look into the eyes of his characters and draw out such complexity.
All in all, Taiwan cannot claim credit for Lee's success, despite the memorable films he made here. Yet Lee's career is a model for all Taiwanese to follow: Embrace the world and all that it offers.
So there is a lesson in Lee's journey for those who care to consider it: Let Taiwanese shed their provincialism and self-doubt and cultivate individuality, talent and passion rather than meekly subject themselves to the agendas of government and political miscreants.
And let them also find comfort among their limitations and scars: Hulk, Lee's remarkable allegory of child abuse and healing, teaches us that there are times when people with dignity who have been horribly mistreated are allowed to become very, very angry before finding some kind of peace with themselves.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰) are expected to meet this month in Paris to prepare for a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). According to media reports, the two sides would discuss issues such as the potential purchase of Boeing aircraft by China, increasing imports of US soybeans and the latest impacts of Trump’s reciprocal tariffs. However, recent US military action against Iran has added uncertainty to the Trump-Xi summit. Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) called the joint US-Israeli airstrikes and the
RSS